Thanksgiving: Korean and Regular

This was a good Thanksgiving holiday. I ate an abnormal amount of food, watched an abnormal amount of football and slept an abnormal amount of hours. It was awesome! On Wednesday we had our last lecture for the week, which was on church history. Then, that night our base had its Thanksgiving. This is so the families on the base can have theirs on the actual day. This was my third Thanksgiving on the base and it was really nice. There were about 60 people, many who were from other countries. I love sharing Thanksgiving with people who've never experienced it before. I made sure to sit by Deborah from China to see what she thought of it all.

The staff had set up a beautiful spread outside under tents. There were Christmas lights, table cloths and tons of delicious food. Unfortunately there was also tons of wind and rain, which meant we all got wet. There was a turkey carving contest between the older men of the base. One of the guys, Fritz began his carving with a huge Samurai knife. It was pretty funny. They were also all wearing chef hats, which made me laugh. After the turkey carving, the rain was getting too many people wet so we took half the tables inside so that the other tables could reap the full benefit of the tent.

Despite the change of venue, we managed to enjoy our meal. Even though the head cook was Canadian, she managed to pull off an excellent American Thanksgiving. The sweet potato casserole was the best I've ever eaten. I heard it was made by some Swiss people who'd never even heard of it before. The food was very good and there was plenty of it. I tried to convince Deborah that we ate the gourd table decorations as a tradition but she was on to my schemes.

After the meal, one of the staff girls gave a marvelous rendition of the pilgrim story. I don't think I could properly describe its hilarity in this blog. Then we sang the National anthem. After that, the Swedish guys got up and sang their national anthem. They were followed by the Swiss guys who sang and then passed out Swiss chocolate. Then everyone tried to goad the Ingrids from Norway to sing their national anthem. One Ingrid claimed they didn't have one. In the end, they did come up and represent with their song. I tried to get the dozen or so Canadians to get up and sing, "Oh, Canada," but they were all unpatriotic wusses. All in all I had good company, good food and several national anthems. A good Thanksgiving for sure.

The next day, I went to another Thanksgiving celebration at a local Korean church where some of my fellow students help with the Sunday school class. It was a sort of thank you for the volunteers but they encouraged them to bring friends. I like Koreans and I like free food so clearly I was down. We socialized for a bit and then ate...a lot. There was a mix of Korean and American food. I was afraid they would stuff the turkey with kimchi (fermented cabbage) but thankfully the two items were served separately. I passed on the kimchi. The food was good and the hosts were very gracious.

After lunch, we went into a large empty room. A woman performed a traditional Korean dance with full make-up and costume. It was really neat. Then a couple of our boys sang a song in English and Korean. It was pretty funny to watch them stumble over the Korean words. The people of the church were super appreciative and almost moved to tears by the fact that they sang Korean. Then they had a lady do some sort of traditional drum routine. That lady had some serious talent and some serious rhythm. It was really impressive. Then one of our girls, Michelle did a dance and another girl, Chelsea sang. It was also really nice.

I made it home in time to watch my Texas Longhorns beat a surprisingly good A&M team. Now if only Alabama or Florida had lost! That would have made it the best Thanksgiving!